GOP Votes for Contempt as "Fast and Furious" Blows Up in Its Face [View all]

[Ghost of Huey Long]

The "Fast and Furious" imbroglio may have just gone sideways on House Republicans. Just prior to them leading a House vote for contempt against Attorney General Eric Holder on Thursday, a far-reaching investigation published by Fortune magazine poked major holes in the conservative storyline about the alleged gun operation. Claims that law enforcement engaged in a deadly plot to let Mexican outlaws smuggle US guns, the magazine reports, are based on allegations by a lone whistleblower who may in fact be the only person who did any illegal gun-smuggling. The real cause of violence and crime south of the border, it reports, is lax gun laws in Arizona and elsewhere pushed by Republicans and their friends at the National Rifle Association....

According to Fortune, though, almost everything about the story that Republicans have been flogging is wrong. And the magazine makes the case that the GOP's allegations against Holder and the Obama administration aren't just inaccurate—rather, they distract from the possibility that GOP's politics are actually to blame for the deluge of three-quarters of a million American guns per year into Mexico. "Republicans who support the National Rifle Association and its attempts to weaken gun laws are lambasting ATF agents for not seizing enough weapons—ones that, in this case, prosecutors deemed to be legal," the report states....


* ATF agents did not recruit anyone to buy weapons and pass them to criminals, with a single exception: John Dodson, the renegade agent who allegedly blew the whistle on the "Fast & Furious" operation. Against Voth's express instructions, Dodson—who according to Fortune's account was a seemingly insubordinate, slapdash former narcotics cop from Virginia that even his ex-partner describes as "an asshole"—"used $2,500 in ATF funds to purchase six AK Draco pistols from local gun dealers," then passed them on to a suspected gun trafficker, then...went on vacation.

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/06/fast-and-furious-investigation-going-sideways-gop